Khulna Metropolitan Police has arrested a 60-year-old woman under the Special Powers Act allegedly after her US-based son made a Facebook post about the trial process of late Maulana Delwar Hossain Sayedee and the disappearance of his prosecution-turned defence witness Shukhoranjan Bali.
Tanzilur Rahman, a PhD candidate in materials science and engineering at Michigan State University in the United States, said that the police arrested his mother, Anisa Siddika, on Sunday for his post and to ‘intimidate’ him.
His family said the police produced her and two others arrested along with Anisa before the court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in Khulna on Monday, and they were sent to jail pending their bail hearing in the case today.
Tanzilur said that he wrote a post about the presence of Shukhoranjan Bali during the funeral prayer for Sayedee, and the post was widely shared.
Human Rights Watch in 2013 said that Bangladeshi national Shukhoranjan Bali was abducted by the Bangladeshi police from the entrance to the International Crimes Tribunal courthouse, detained in Bangladesh, and then forced by Bangladeshi security forces across the border into India, where he claimed he was detained and tortured by the ‘notorious’ Border Security Force before being held in Kolkata’s Dum Dum jail.
Following his widely shared post, Tanzilur said that police, accompanied by local Awami League and its affiliated body Juba League activists, stormed into his grandparents’ house in Boyra on Sunday, attacked his uncle, and looted two laptops and cash. The police arrested his mother as she protested their actions.
As a few tenants also protested the attack, the police also arrested students Rokibul Islam, 24, and Tamim Iqbal, 19, on the spot.
Juba League’s Khulna city unit president, Shafikul Islam Palash, denied his party members’ involvement in looting or attacking anyone, claiming that only a former Juba League man was present with the local police.
The Khalishpur police station officer-in-charge, Monirul Gias, said that they arrested the woman and two others on charges of ‘sabotage.’
KMP deputy commissioner (north division), Molla Jahangir Hossain, claimed that her arrest had no relation to her son’s Facebook post.
He said that the police team had arrested them under the Special Powers Act for her support of the Islami Chhatra Shibir and for planning to carry out ‘sabotage.’
In their Facebook post, KMP claimed that they had seized religious books, magazines, three laptops, and four mobile phone sets used for ‘sabotage’. It said they carried out the raid based on specific information.
